Tag Archives: Little River

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Acorn woodpeckers have been busy gathering up their namesake nuts and storing them in granary trees. Jon Shiu wrote, “I observed a couple acorn woodpeckers in Little River."

[At first] I have not seen them with any acorns. But I looked a little closer and could see the acorns.” Jon photographed a granary tree, a dead upright tree where they drilled holes to store their acorns.

These woodpeckers drill thousands of holes in dead trees, utility poles, and other wood, filling them with harvested acorns. The whole group constantly monitors and moves drying acorns to smaller holes to keep them secure from theft by other animals.

When my research mentioned “other wood,” I had no idea these birds would use an empty birdhouse for storage in Gualala. Mark Escajeda wrote, “We enjoy our delightfully noisome year-round neighbors, a community of acorn woodpeckers. They fly around and chat among themselves as if they own the place, which we guess in many ways they do. This year they've taken advantage of the idled birdhouses we have on our side of the fence. We'll clean the houses in late winter for springtime nesting by violet-green swallows and western bluebirds, but in the meantime, we're happy to help.”

Watching Nature is fascinating! Thanks to Jon and Mark for allowing me to share their photos with  you here.

We received 1.14 inches from the first storm, 25.27 season to date. Next storm is about to hit!

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Waves are fascinating to watch and to photograph. Ron LeValley photographed this wave off of Little River, close to the town of Mendocino.

June Little River Wave by Ron LeValley

Thanks to Ron for this beautiful photo. You can almost hear and smell the salt air, can't you?!

To see much more of Ron's nature photography, here is the link to his website:  http://levalleyphoto.com/home/

 

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Jodi C. Smith is the Executive Director of Naked Whale Research. She has relocated to the Irish Beach area to study the endangered Southern Resident pods of Killer Whales - known as J, K and L pods. These Orcas are on the move. They have spent the summer months south of Vancouver Island and in Puget Sound. Now they are passing by the Mendonoma Coast. On Jan. 10th K pod was spotted a mile off of Little River. Jodi went out in a boat to get these photos. As you can probably tell, the seas were rough.

This last photo shows the very tall dorsal fin. According to Jodi these Orcas are specialized fish eaters, with Chinook salmon being their favorite.

Today the weather is clear  with few whitecaps on the ocean - perfect weather for spotting Gray Whales and hopefully K pod! Thanks to Jodi for allowing me to share her photos with you. To learn more about her work, here's her website: http://www.nakedwhaleresearch.org/ You can also follow her blog on this website.